Wall Street Piles Into Digital Asset as Canton Network Draws $355M Round Led by a16z

Digital Asset, the company behind the Canton Network institutional blockchain, has closed a $355 million funding round led by a16z crypto, with participation from HSBC, Apollo, CME, BNP Paribas, ABN Amro, ADIA, S&P Global, Tradeweb, and more than 20 other institutional names.

The round, announced by Digital Asset, was advised by FT Partners. It values the company above $2 billion, per Bloomberg's earlier reporting from May when the round was targeting roughly $300 million. The final close at $355 million exceeded that target. Investors include Broadridge, Citadel Securities, Coinbase Ventures, Polychain, iCapital, SBI Group, and Hanwha Investment & Securities. Abu Dhabi Investment Authority participated through a wholly owned subsidiary.

Canton's Fee Ranking

Canton Network generated $60.74 million in fees over the past 30 days, per DefiLlama, placing it ahead of Tron ($31.27 million) and Ethereum ($13.51 million) over the same window. CEO Yuval Rooz posted Wednesday on X that Canton processes the highest fees of any institutional blockchain. Canton's all-time cumulative fees stand at $458.14 million, per DefiLlama.

In the press release, Rooz described the company's position: "For capital markets to move onchain, institutions need infrastructure that reflects how they actually operate, with privacy, compliance, scale, and interoperability built in from the start. Canton was purpose-built for this, and Digital Asset is working with more than 700 ecosystem participants to make Canton the core infrastructure for global finance."

a16z Partnership

The release frames the investment as the start of an ongoing partnership, giving Digital Asset access to a16z crypto's networks in company building, policy, and research. a16z General Partner Ali Yahya commented: "Digital Asset has built one of the clearest examples of blockchain product-market fit in regulated finance. We believe that Digital Asset is building foundational infrastructure for the next generation of financial markets."

The firm raised $2.2 billion for its fifth crypto fund in May, bringing its total dedicated crypto capital to roughly $10 billion across five vehicles.

Prior Rounds and Existing Participants

The $355 million close follows roughly $185 million raised over the preceding 12 months: a $135 million round led by DRW Venture Capital and Tradeweb in June 2025, and a $50 million extension from BNY, Nasdaq, S&P Global, and iCapital in December 2025. Several of those institutions returned as participants in the current round.

Canton is a public privacy-enabled Layer 1 blockchain whose smart contracts are written in Daml, a language Digital Asset developed for financial workflows. Sub-transaction privacy lets institutions share infrastructure without exposing counterparty positions or proprietary order flow. The network has attracted both operators and clients from regulated finance, including DTCC, which is testing tokenized U.S. Treasury securities on Canton, and HSBC, which ran a tokenized deposit pilot on the network. Three major Japanese financial institutions, Mizuho, Nomura, and Japan Securities Clearing Corporation, have also run proof-of-concept work on Canton.

Digital Asset says the capital will fund expansion of Canton's product offerings, developer engagement, and network growth. A breakdown between primary capital and secondary has not been disclosed.